Conventionally, a customer local area network (LAN) is connected to a home gateway (HGW). The HGW terminates the local LAN segment and acts as a default gateway functionality to the wide area network (WAN). It usually also carries a network address translation (NAT) function and attaches to the internet protocol (IP) edge functionality which is usually the Broadband Network Gateway (BNG). This setup provides a clear separation between the local area network segment and the wide area network, wherein the demarcation point is inside the home gateway.
By using virtual home gateways/virtual customer premises equipment (vHGW/vCPE), functionality of a classical home router can be transferred into a WAN-based platform. Usually the implementations of such virtual home gateways are built upon a virtualization infrastructure. In such a scenario, functions such as dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), the default gateway functionality and the Network Address Translation reside in the virtual home gateway. Accordingly, architectures revealed in the state of the art are unsuitable for protecting the privacy of users and user equipment.